A Closer Look at the Transpire Project Lifecycle

When you’re evaluating a team to bring your latest project to life, it’s important to consider how their lifecycle works.

Project lifecycles can vary between industries and organisations based on a team’s capabilities, methodologies, and individual preferences.

It’s the high-level ‘how’ of your project in addition to the ‘what’ at the end, and can thus strongly influence the quality, features, delivery timeframe, and cost of your finished product.

At Transpire, we have an established lifecycle that maximises the quality and features of projects within our clients’ defined timeframes and budgets.

While every project stage is tailored to each individual client, they always flow through the same lifecycle…

Selecting an organisation with the right lifecycle will ensure your project is developed according to its optimum scope using the best quality and innovation standards, within a defined timeframe and budget.

Stage 1 – Classification

Project ideas come to Transpire at different levels of refinement, so our sales and delivery teams work together to classify each one in preparation for the Discovery Stage.

A client may have a product idea but not the specifics, or their planned specifics may require validation. Alternately, clients may approach us with an existing product that they wish to augment with more features or functionality.

At the end of this stage, Transpire has a greater understanding of the high-level size, shape, and scope of the project.

Stage 2 – Discovery

Transpire undertakes a robust discovery process with our clients. This ensures that everyone involved understands the project’s end goal, all of the top-level features/functionality and tasks that make up the project, the initial priorities, and how the entire cross-company team fits together.

The Discovery Stage greatly increases the chances of project success because it allows our team to begin the Execution Stage with knowledge of all items for completion, in what order they need to be worked on, and who will be responsible for delivering each piece.

The key to the Discovery Stage is the ‘Inception Workshop’, which is usually split across two days to accommodate the scope of the agenda. The first day is dedicated to information absorption, where the Transpire delivery team will meet with the client’s stakeholders to share information and ideas. The aim of this session is to make sure everyone understands and agrees on:

What the client is trying to achieve.

The project’s value proposition.

If there are any risks or issues the team can already identify.

What everyone’s project roles and responsibilities will be.

The second day starts with unpacking all of the work required to deliver the project, which is called a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is created collaboratively by Transpire and the client, and includes not only the technical tasks but also elements like staff training, setting up a support model, marketing, and anything else that needs to happen to make the project a success.

The last phase of the Inception Workshop is the Story Mapping process. This involves creating a series of cards with all the features, functionality, and tasks which represent an end-to-end process for the desired product. Transpire uses these cards to identify opportunities to automate and digitise parts of the process. The cards are then prioritised by our clients to decide on the MVP, which comprises the most indispensable features and functionality and thus those that should be built first.

Following the Inception Workshop, Transpire presents the client with an estimation of the time and cost of their project’s MVP. A Statement of Work is established for the agreed project scope, the project is set up in Transpire’s systems, and a formal backlog of work is prepared for the delivery team.

Stage 3 – Execution

Transpire customises the delivery process to best suit each individual project. Complex projects may require more coordination and a greater variety or frequency of meetings, while more lightweight projects may be better suited to an equally lightweight approach to achieve the best value for money.

Regardless of the complexity, Transpire utilises Agile development practices and works alongside clients throughout the delivery process, which allows for the very best execution of their requirements.

Delivery will almost always include the following elements:

Work will be conducted in sprints (usually of 2 – 4 weeks each), with the aim of creating a viable product at the end of each of these sprints. This means that our clients will not have to wait until the end of the project to receive value – a valuable product is created for them each and every sprint.

Our clients prioritise the project’s backlog of stories to determine the order of work that the delivery team picks up – higher priority work will be completed in earlier sprints. Our clients can re-order the backlog as the project progresses if their priorities change.

The team will meet on a regular (daily) basis to discuss their progress. This meeting ensures that everyone stays informed and aligned with each other, and that any delays or issues can be raised for swift resolution.

All of the delivery team’s work is peer-reviewed and passes through a robust testing and quality assurance process before being demonstrated to our clients. This demonstration, which usually occurs at the end of each sprint, ensures there are no surprises (our clients review and sign-off on each piece of work as it’s completed).

A ‘Retrospective’ meeting is held to reflect on each sprint and allow the team to further improve for the next one.

A Sprint Status Report is prepared for our clients at the conclusion of each sprint. This includes budget information (forecast vs. actual), a resource breakdown, the activities completed during the sprint, the release notes if a release has occurred, a list of any existing risks or issues, and a log of any key decisions which were made for the project.

Stage 4 – Launch

Wherever the final product ends up, for example Google Play or the App Store, Transpire will work alongside its clients to ensure a successful launch. Our experienced team can organise the product launch themselves or provide clients with the knowledge and tools to be able to do so independently.

Stage 5 – Support

Transpire has a dedicated support team to make sure our clients’ products keep running smoothly far past their initial launch. This support team continuously monitors client products for any issues, proactively performs maintenance, and looks after any problems to ensure they are resolved as soon as possible. Our clients can feel confident their products are in safe hands.

Selecting an organisation with the right lifecycle will ensure your project is developed according to its optimum scope using the best quality and innovation standards, within a defined timeframe and budget.

If Transpire sounds like it might be a great fit for your next project, please get in touch with us; we’d love to discuss it with you.